Shudder Saturday: Wilderness (2006)

I'm not sure if it's still the case but Wilderness is one of those movies I always spotted in the bargain bin section of any shop selling DVDs. Which is why I bought it. It sat on my shelf for many years, and I could never work up the enthusiasm to actually watch the thing. The reason? Well, I'd been burned some time ago by certain words - "Wes Craven presents" (I know, I know, I should have known better) - and ended up watching some piece of dross called The Breed. The Breed was another movie from 2006 about young people in an isolated location being threatened with killer dogs. The main difference between these two movies, as far as I could see, is that one was American and one was British. Thankfully, once I worked up the nerve to give it a go, the other main difference is that Wilderness is a much better movie.

Sean Pertwee is the man in charge of a group of juvenile delinquents who are forced to spend some time on what is alleged to be an uninhabited island. They soon find that there is another group of youngsters camping there (some girls, watched over by a tough woman named Louise). There's also at least one other person on the island. Oh, and a pack of vicious dogs that will happily chow down on anyone they catch. Can the group stop fighting among themselves long enough to fight off their new enemy?

The second feature film from director Michael J. Bassett (who started off strong with the impressive and enjoyable Deathwatch), Wilderness has enough in the mix to make it a fun time-waster for horror fans, even if the script, a first from Dario Poloni (who only has this and the superior Black Death in his writing credits, at this moment), is never as strong as it could be. There are actually a lot of positives: the death of a character that sets off the main events is well done, the antagonistic protagonists are all fairly memorable, some decent gore, the cast. Unfortunately, they're undermined by the elements that are either underdeveloped (some more backstory for at least one of the main characters would have been appreciated) or just a bit too predictable, especially during the second half.

Although he's the main authority figure, and as enjoyable as ever, Pertwee isn't the lead. That spot is reserved for Toby Kebbell, playing a tough lad who doesn't seem as bad as some of the others but has no qualms about doing whatever needs done to survive. It's far from Kebbell's best work, but he brings his usual level of considerable talent to the role. Stephen Wight is good value as the most unpleasant of the group, Luke Neal is also good, as his less unpleasant friend, Karly Greene, and Lenora Crichlow both do fine in their roles, and Alex Reid does well in the role of Louise, although it's a shame she doesn't have even more screentime. It's also worth mentioning the dogs, who do a very good job of looking vicious and able to tear people apart into bite-sized meaty chunks.

Not great, not terrible, but Wilderness is easily the best of the 2006 movies about people being terrorised by killer dogs in an isolated location. And you can quote me on that.

6/10

You can pick up the DVD here.
Americans can pick it up here.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

I enjoyed the movie version of Silent Hill. I have fond memories of playing the game many years ago and the movie recreated a lot of imagery that I'll always remember with fondness (fondness = paralysing fear as I played the game at night with the lights out and then started to panic whenever I heard a siren signalling the approach of "the darkness"). So when I started to hear the negative reaction towards this sequel I still held onto hope. Some people had, after all, hated the first movie.

Alas, the majority were right on this occasion. Silent Hill: Revelation is rubbish. It's a lot of cool imagery from the games created thanks to some varying CGI with nothing substantial to call an actual plot. Of course, the plot of the first movie wasn't exactly anything to write home about, but it did enough to get by while the atmosphere was heaped on in thick, thick spoonfuls.

Adelaide Clemens plays a young woman who lives a transient, anonymous life. This is all done because her dad (Sean Bean) has warned her that Silent Hill wants to claim her. He's right. But changing address and keeping a low profile isn't enough to stop Silent Hill reaching out and trying to get what it wants. The darkness starts to fall, bringing strange visions with it.

Written and directed by Michael J. Bassett (who, of course, had the mythology of the games - adapted into a movie idea by Laurent Hadida - to work from), this film just doesn't work as a film. There are individual moments that manage to impress, such as a sequence involving the famous, creepy, nurse characters, but these are few and far between. Any twists and turns can be predicted well ahead of time, the CGI varies wildly between great and godawful and there are exactly zero characters that viewers will care about.

Clemens is okay in the lead role, she's just stuck with bad material, and Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell don't have much time onscreen as her parents, but everyone else is wasted, with Martin Donovan almost managing to be the exception. When a film with so much potential manages to squander the talents of Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss AND Malcolm McDowell then it deserves any critical lashing that it receives (and this did receive a fair bit already). As for Kit Harington, his role is such a bag of cliches and signposted moments that he's not really required to give any kind of performance, he just has to hit his marks and spout horrible dialogue. Okay, okay, he has to give SOME kind of performance, of course, but it's impossible to judge thanks to the treatment of his character, which seems to have been written by a particularly low-level Auto-scripting program.

There's enough here, on the surface, to almost make the movie worth a watch. It's below average, but some of the visuals are enjoyable and I, for one, like getting to revisit parts of Silent Hill. Your best option, however, is to simply rewatch the first movie. Or, if you're a gamer, replay the videogames.

4/10

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